Fitness Watch

Fitness Watch is your site for making sense of fitness advice."Truth" has a shelf life.
The shelf life of "truth" is very short in the domains of fitness, health and well-being.
The reason is that so much of what we are told is "true" is really baseless.
At Fitness Watch we separate fitness information from fitness noise.

An Oprah threat to your health and the health of your children? Have you been misled?

Monday, December 31, 2012

These results confirm that small, consistent changes in our daily eating behavior can result in gradual weight loss and developing healthier eating habits. However, they also show that it is a challenge for many people to stick to a program for a long period of time. So what does this mean for someone wanting to lose weight or eat healthier? It means that finding an initial set of tips that are relevant and doable for you can be enough to learn the general principle, later come up with your own changes and succeed at reaching your goal!

Note that the conclusion is for "small, consistent changes," not "easy" changes.

Fact is, there is a big difference between small and easy.

For most, easy is not so easy when it comes to the changes needed to lose weight.

This should be told to any prospective dieter up front.

That way disappointment and frustration have the potential to be avoided as best as possible.

Understatement, false statement and truer-words-were-never-spoke statement of the year.

To meet the challenges of a growing obesity epidemic, primary care physicians (PCPs) need additional training and may need to refer patients to nutritionists or dietitians to help improve care, according to a national survey of 500 PCPs published online December 20 in BMJ Open.

False statement part - conventional approaches to weight loss are the number one cause of diet failure. See here, here, and here.

Understatement part - "may not be best" as in it never will and is really crappy, let alone not best.

Truer words part - for sure it will not be best delivered by anyone with a conventional sick care approach, including dietitians and nutritionists.

Overindulgence during this feasting season can play havoc with the human body's food clock, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco reported in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

Overeating, changing sleeping patterns, and significant changes in eating habits over the holiday period can upset the body's "food clock", a collection of genes and molecules that interact with one another and keep the human body on a metabolic even keel.

The holiday season is near or here and calls for you to do anything but celebrate with festive meals can be heard from the Grinches everywhere.

This is madness.

As if two or three days of celebratory eating will make you fat for an entire year.

One day is 0.27% of a year.

Let’s assume there are three holidays for overeating: Thanksgiving, Xmas and New Years.

Three days constitute a mere 0.82 % of a year.

The fact is that diligence and eating for health, which means eating for a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9, are what a person should do the OTHER days of the year, the other 99.18% of the year.

Repeat – the rest of the year is 99.18%.

You have to be a hard-core sadist to suggest that people give-up celebrating their holidays with festive meals because whatever they do calorically for less than 1% of the year will “ruin their lives.”

Do not believe that drivel.

A holiday is a holiday.

Enjoy!

In the spirit of celebration, FitnessMed, Inc., is happy to bring you this guide on how to overeat for the holidays.

Not only will the strategies here help you overeat so you gain the least weight, it will explain to you how you can overconsume up to 33% more Calories without gaining more weight than you would otherwise.

This translates into more turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, stuffing, etc.

Ready?

Here goes.

When you overconsume Calories, i.e., eat more Calories than your body burns, those excess Calories get stored as fat.

There is no way around this.

To store the extra Calories as fat, your body has to convert the excess food you eat into body fat.

Even though all food Calories are equal, storage of Calories is not.

Overeaten Calories that come from fat are stored more efficiently than overeaten Calories that come from carbohydrate or protein.

What this means is that if you overeat 100 Calories as fat, 97 of them will get stored on your body.

If you overeat 100 Calories as carbohydrate, 75 of them will get stored on your body.

Thus, almost 100% of overeaten fat ends up on you, while only ¾ of overeaten carbohydrate is what you end up wearing. For protein, the number is even less.

This means that you can overeat about 1/3 more Calories as carbohydrate and be no worse off than had you overeaten the Calories as fat (from a weight perspective).

133 Calories x 75% = 99.75 Calories.

So instead of overeating 100 fat Calories and adding 97 Calories of body fat, you can overeat 133 carbohydrate Calories and add about the same number of Calories as body fat.

The trick here is to overeat the Calories as pure carbohydrate and/or protein as possible.

This is not a difficult trick.

Skinless turkey, lean ham, stuffing moistened with fat-free broth and fat-free butter instead of oil, fat-free butter on rolls, fat-free sour cream on potatoes and substituting fruit purees for fat in baked goods (yes, it works – search online for “fat substitutes in baking”) are examples of ways to add more carbohydrate/protein and less fat to your holiday fare. (search online for “fat substitutes in cooking” for more ideas)

Granted the taste of the foods may be different.

However, if someone is interested in reducing their Calories from fat and being able to overeat even more if they choose, the price is much smaller than reducing the festivity of celebrating with food.

It is also smaller than experiencing the day-after guilt.

Besides, just because the taste may be different does not mean it will be less enjoyable. It might even taste better to you.

Personally, IMHO, it is nothing more than another attempt by a crooked person to rip-off money from desperate people. (According to the bovine billionaire herself, there are "more than 2.4 million" of them who read the magazine. Add to that the people who watch her TV show, listen to her radio programming, watch her TV network and visit her website and you have an awful lot of impressionable people being fooled.)

Despite the fact that the IMHO whore-for-the-money admits that she was gaining weight beginning "in February 2007," she was too greedy to recuse herself from promoting the diet scheme concocted by her and Bob, instead averring how well it worked for her. Even to this day.

I just pulled this (12-14-08) from their diet website. The website is copyright, 2007. The hardcover edition of the book came out December 26, 2006. The paperback edition came out December 26, 2007. The "I" is fatso "O":

I lost weight in stages. First I became active, and I still work out even though I really hate it, but I know if I don’t I will end up 200 pounds again. Then I started working on my eating. I stopped eating past 7:30 at night. When Bob told me it would make a big difference in my weight, I resisted. I thought it was going to be too hard. But I was surprised to find that it wasn’t; even more surprised when it turned out to be one of the most effective changes I made.

I’ve now taken most of the bad foods out of my diet and replaced them with good. I eat smaller portions and I eat healthy foods as a way of life, not a diet to go on and off.

"As will be seen in Exhibits A, B and M, there is much made of 'truth' and 'truthfulness' by both Mr. Greene and Ms. Winfrey. Likewise, they speak of accepting responsibility for one’s actions. In fact, 'truthfulness' and 'responsibility' appear in the General Index on pages 272 and 271, respectively, in the hardcover edition.

I submit that in the FTC’s taking of its responsibility it has the opportunity to not only protect consumers from what I contend (and what I posit a reasonable consumer would contend if he/she were aware of them) are clearly false and deceptive advertising practices, but also to provide Ms. Winfrey and Mr. Greene with opportunities to accept responsibility for and the consequences of their dishonesty and untruthfulness."

"All you have to do is work out harder and eat less! Get your 10,000 steps in!"

What to do?

Give back all the money they took under clearly false pretenses (plus interest earned and any damages), apologize to the world, do some jail time for being the IMHO crooks they are, shut their mouths for good (and the mouths of Oprah's other experts), stop publishing/writing on topics at which they are failures, slither off into the sunset and just go away for good.

I am clear that, IMHO, Oprah and Bob are two of the leaders in the nutritional homicide movement. There are others, like Mehmet Oz, IMHO.

But what is so grossly apparently dishonest, is the Photoshopped image of AdipOprah.

Her entry into the fitness/weight loss domain is like the book Animal Farm.

The pig is in charge.

She claims to be all about integrity, but it is clear to me that she is a dishonest person who has a profit-motivated integrity of convenience that is basically the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help her Photoshop.

This is how Oprah really looks.

Big and fat and with chinny chin chins.

And big thighs and fat ass.

To see more images of AdipOprah and how she really looks following Bob's and Oprah's Best Life Diet, go:

"From the bestselling author of Get With the Program! and Bob Greene's Total Body Makeover comes The Best Life Diet, a lifetime plan for losing weight and keeping it off. Bob Greene helped Oprah achieve her dramatic weight loss, and he can help you too. You'll eat the same delicious food that Oprah enjoys, and, just like Oprah, you'll have Bob to encourage you at every step."

Just like he did for Oprah! (see images and image links above, in case you have forgotten how good Bob is and/or how fat Oprah is)

Shame on her.

She should be ashamed but I suspect she is not.

If she ever had an ounce of shame, it has likely been replaced by pounds of fat.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Despite more than 25 years of research on antiobesity drugs, few medications have shown long-term success. Now researchers reporting online on December 21 in the Cell Press journal Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism say that targeting taste sensors in the gut may be a promising new strategy.

The gut "tastes" what we eat -- bitter, sweet, fat, and savory -- in much the same way as the tongue and through the use of similar signaling mechanisms.

Given the amount of s**t that the gut has in it, it must like the taste.

If more people ate s**t or food that tasted like s**t, it is likely that they would gain less weight or even lose!

And, this type of grub, has the added advantage of delivering itself to your table.

Food enthusiasts interested in sustainable farm practices may soon have a new meat alternative: insects. Beetle larvae (called mealworms) farms produce more edible protein than traditional farms for chicken, pork, beef or milk, for the same amount of land used, according to research published December 19 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Dennis Oonincx and colleagues from the University of Wageningen, Netherlands.

The researchers compared the environmental impact of meat production on a mealworm farm to traditional animal farms using three parameters: Land usage, energy needs, and greenhouse gas emissions. From the start of the process to the point that the meat left the farm, they found that mealworms scored better than the other foods. Per unit of edible protein produced, mealworm farms required less land and similar amounts of energy.

Over the last half decade, it has become increasingly clear that the normal gastrointestinal (GI) bacteria play a variety of very important roles in the biology of human and animals. Now Vic Norris of the University of Rouen, France, and coauthors propose yet another role for GI bacteria: that they exert some control over their hosts' appetites. Their review was published online ahead of print in the Journal of Bacteriology.

This hypothesis is based in large part on observations of the number of roles bacteria are already known to play in host biology, as well as their relationship to the host system. "Bacteria both recognize and synthesize neuroendocrine hormones," Norris et al. write. "This has led to the hypothesis that microbes within the gut comprise a community that forms a microbial organ interfacing with the mammalian nervous system that innervates the gastrointestinal tract." (That nervous system innervating the GI tract is called the "enteric nervous system." It contains roughly half a billion neurons, compared with 85 billion neurons in the central nervous system.)

"The gut microbiota respond both to both the nutrients consumed by their hosts and to the state of their hosts as signaled by various hormones," write Norris et al. That communication presumably goes both ways: they also generate compounds that are used for signaling within the human system, "including neurotransmitters such as GABA, amino acids such as tyrosine and tryptophan - which can be converted into the mood-determining molecules, dopamine and serotonin" - and much else, says Norris.

"Mood determining" bacteria.

The next Twinkie Defense.

Only bacteria-brained researchers would believe it.

And only smaller-brained fatsos would consider this foolishness even remotely plausible.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

And when you read the following drivel, see if you can determine what the heck these morons are talking about?

Recently the Mediterranean diet has achieved lots of distinctions, from the inclusion by the UNESCO in the Olympus of the World heritage list to a long series of dedicated congresses and meetings held everywhere in the globe with the aim of promoting its healthy properties against the most threatening diseases such as cardiovascular disease and tumors. So the Mediterranean diet is an international star acclaimed by the scientific community as the best dietary paradigm. And yet this eating model seems to creak under the burden of the economic crisis scaring the food trolley of millions of families worldwide.

The alarm was raised by a team of Italian scientists from the Research Laboratories at the Fondazione di ricerca e cura Giovanni Paolo II -- Catholic University of Campobasso who published in the British Medical Journal, BMJ Open, the results of a study on 13,000 subjects.

"Our hypothesis comes from a pretty simple observation. -- argues Marialaura Bonaccio first author of the study -- We sought to see whether the increasing cost of the main food products and the progressive impoverishment of people could contribute to the obesity pandemic which has been affecting the countries of the Mediterranean area during the recent years, including Italy."

Researchers analyzed information on over 13,000 people, a sub-sample of the widest epidemiological Moli-sani Project. Since 2005 this project has been recruiting about 25,000 adult subjects from the Molise region aiming to investigate the relationship between genetic and environmental factors in the onset of chronic disease such as cardiovascular disease and tumors. The authors explored the association between income and dietary habits of participants, evaluated according to specific scores of adherence to Mediterranean diet.

"We found that low-income people showed the poorest adherence to Mediterranean diet as compared to those in the uppermost group of income -- says Licia Iacoviello, chairperson of the Moli-sani Project- In particular, high-income people have 72% odds of being in the top category of adherence to Mediterranean diet. This means a less healthy diet for the poorest, who are more likely to get prepackaged or junk food, often cheaper than the fresh foods of the Mediterranean tradition. In the lowest-income category we have recorded a higher prevalence of obesity as well. Low-income people report 36 % of obesity compared to 20% in the uppermost income class."

There has been zero proof of cause and effect.

There is just an alleged link, no matter how tenuous.

Yet, this passes for research.

The Med Diet has virtually nothing to do with obesity, overweight and their prevention.

Eating meals together as a family, even if only once or twice a week, increases children's daily fruit and vegetable intake to near the recommended 5 A Day, according to researchers at the University of Leeds.

It is because of meals at home that kids are fat.

Increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables is far less important than decreasing the number of Calories consumed.

Not if the mirror is the reason why the too-fat decide to lose weight.

For years Blanca Ramirez, like many Americans, started each new year with a resolution to lose weight. But no more. "I lost 55 pounds this year and the weight is rolling off and will stay off," said the 42 year-old, married, mother of three. Ramirez underwent bariatric surgery at Loyola Center for Metabolic Surgery & Bariatric Care in August and has lost 55 pounds in four months.

If the mirror is your Muse, go for it.

Despite the crap spouted by the nanny state Progressive medicine crowd.

Friday, December 28, 2012

And remember that First Cow, Michellesie Obama, encourages celebrity chefs to create meals for kids.

Recipes created by popular television chefs contain significantly more energy, protein, fat, and saturated fat and less fibre per portion than supermarket ready meals, finds a study in the Christmas issue published on the British Medical Journal website.

The authors suggest including nutritional information on recipes in cookery books. Consideration should also be given to regulation of the recipes demonstrated by television chefs similar to that limiting advertisement of foods classified as high in fat, salt, or sugar, they add.

Among overweight adults, participation in an intensive lifestyle intervention (that included counseling sessions and targets to reduce caloric intake and increase physical activity) was associated with a greater likelihood of partial remission of type 2 diabetes; however, the absolute remission rates were modest, according to a study in the December 19 issue of JAMA.

It is all about the Calories. i.e., weight loss from fewer Calories in than out.

And fat people are simply resistant to doing what it takes to make their diseases of choice "go away."

The only solution is to wean them from the "we pay for your sick care re: your illnesses of choice" teet.

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed the first synthetic compound that can reverse the effects of a serious metabolic condition known as fatty liver disease. True to its name, the disease involves an abnormal buildup of fat in the liver.

The compound -- known as SR9238 -- is the first to effectively suppress lipid or fat production in the liver, eliminating inflammation and reversing fat accumulation in animal models of fatty liver disease. The new compound also significantly lowered total cholesterol levels, although precisely how that occurred remains something of a mystery...

Fatty liver, which often accompanies obesity and type 2 diabetes, frequently leads to more serious conditions including cirrhosis and liver cancer. The condition affects some 10 to 24 percent of the general population, according to a 2003 study in GUT, an international journal of gastroenterology and hepatology.

Just what is needed - a compound that allegedly works and by mysterious means.

There will be no mystery when the harmful side effects occur.

Better to lose the weight as fat from the body, including the liver, than to take mystery meds.

A research study from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has yielded important breakthroughs on how the body loses muscle, paving the way for new treatments for aging, obesity and diabetes.

The study found that by inhibiting a particular molecule produced naturally in the body, muscle loss due to aging or illnesses can be prevented. Blocking the same molecule will also trigger the body to go into a 'fat-burning mode' which will fight obesity and also treat the common form of diabetes.

The exciting discoveries have led NTU scientists to embark on joint clinical research with local hospitals to further validate their findings which were previously carried out on animals.

When you read a "medical" article and words such as "important breakthrough" and "exciting discoveries" are used, you can bet that the research has yielded more hot air than anything else.

Those considering how to maintain a healthy weight during holiday festivities, or looking ahead to New Year's resolutions, may want to think twice before reaching for traditional staples like cookies or candy -- or the car keys.

A new study by University of Illinois researchers, led by computer science and mathematics professor Sheldon H. Jacobson, suggests that both daily automobile travel and calories consumed are related to body weight, and reducing either one, even by a small amount, correlates with a reduction in body mass index (BMI).

"We're saying that making small changes in travel or diet choices may lead to comparable obesity reduction, which implies that travel-based interventions may be as effective as dietary interventions," said graduate student Banafsheh Behzad, a co-author of the study, published in the journal Preventive Medicine.

No need for research.

Cutting the number of Calories consumed is the same as burning more (if the two are equal).

It is just that increasing activity, i.e., burning more Calories is hugely less efficient.